A Puree of Poison

by Claudia Bishop

  “He was employed by the state?”

  “The Department of Motor Vehicles,” said Marge. “ ‘Till Louisa up and married some rich old coot who died.”

  “... he is undoubtedly aware of the many, many ways in which an individual-—or even a corporation—can be in violation of a state code or a municipal regulation.”

  Quill, who spent a lot more time than she wanted to mediating disputes between Meg and the DOH, began to get an inkling. Take the intense opportunism of Hedrick’s prose. Add the power of any media to form public opinion in a country where injustices were the price to pay for freedom of speech. Mix the sad truth that Meg refused to pull the Aga away from the wall to clean underneath more than once a year, with the fact that DOH regs required ‘frequent’ cleanings, the degree of frequency to be determined by the local inspector. Meg hated inspector Arnie Cunningham with a passion equal to JaeFs for Sisera. The passion was reciprocated. Result?

  INN KITCHEN CLOSED FOR FILTH!!!!

  Her mind’s eye saw the headline all too clearly. She poked at her copy of the Trumpet! with dismay. “Wow,” she said. “I begin to see what you mean. If the OSHA inspections for a mini-mall are anything like the DOH regs for our kitchen—”

  “Oh, it’s not just OSHA. It’s the DEC. It’s NIST. It’s state regs, country regs, village regs, municipal regs.” There was, Quill noted, a pleased satisfaction in Howie’s voice. “It’s thousands and thousands of pages of government manuals—some with conflicting requirements.”

  “J’a know that OSHA’s self-funded?” asked Marge. “Fact. Those guys come out to inspect and don’t find nothin’, they get whacked when they get back to the office. They’re supposed to bring in enough money in fines to cover their salaries and overhead. Fact.”

  “You don’t know that they get ‘whacked’ when they get back to the office,” said Howie sternly.

  “May not know,” said Betty, “but we can guess.”

  “Well, it’s my opinion that that’s what Conway’s doing. Guessing. But a guess is as good as a bull’s-eye in a project like the mini-mall. Something’s bound to be out of spec. It always is. Some contractor may have not placed a prepayment in a trust account; that’s a lot of trouble for a small operator, and expensive to set up, although it’s a strict requirement of New York State’s. There are, in short, very fertile fields for Mr. Conway to plow.”

  “Oh, my,” said Quill. “Maybe we should just ignore the whole thing.” This was met with varying degrees of scorn, which was, Quill admitted somewhat justified. The meeting wound down several hours later; the sole area of consensus: Hedrick Conway had to be stopped.

  Nobody mentioned Louisa.

  CHAPTER 6

  “It’s a shame, this Conway guy slipping a snake into your Eden.” Georgia Hardwicke looked over the balcony to the herb gardens; beyond the purple lavender and scented geraniums, the Falls flowed white under a bright moon. She was wearing a purple caftan trimmed with gold threads. The gold glittered cheerfully in the darkness of late evening, a little, thought Quill, like Georgia herself. “This is just gorgeous, Quill.” She’d responded to Meg’s invitation to dinner in Quill’s suite with alacrity, having been Kippled, she’d said, almost to screaming boredom; she’d love an opportunity to discuss the murder, as long as it didn’t involve a lot of physical labor. “I’d say that I envied you, but I have a hunch there’s a heck of a lot of work involved. After Doug died, I realized that life is too damn short to work hard.”

  “Most of it falls on Quill,” said Meg loyally.

  “And John and Meg, and Doreen and Kathleen...” Quill sipped her wine and yawned. “God, I’m tired. I usually have more energy.”

  Georgia shot her a shrewd glance. “It’s been a tough couple of days. Exhausting work, discovering a body. Maybe I should make an early night of it and let you guys go to bed.”

  “Not before we thoroughly hash over who murdered Louisa Conway.” Meg sipped at her predinner glass of wine. “I can’t believe that this town’s ignoring a murder. There must be something rotten in the state of Denmark. Who in town do you suppose is guilty of crimes against the mini-mall? Nobody, of course,” Meg answered herself. “Conway’s an idiot. A muckraker and a slime. Which means everybody in town who’s invested in it has a motive.” She took another swallow of the ‘87 Glenora Char-donnay and stuck her lip out at a belligerent angle. “Including me. If the horrible Hedrick wants to get my kitchen closed, just let him try. I’ll make a couple of headlines, all righty. Try ‘Cook Kills Creep’ on for size. But that still doesn’t give us a clue as to who killed his mother.”

  Georgia shook her head slightly. “From what you tell me, Mr. Conway’s brand of journalism might lie behind Louisa’s murder, don’t you think?”

  “His mother didn’t have much to do with the Trumpet!” Quill offered.

  “She bankrolled it, didn’t she?” Meg stretched out in her lounge chair. “Maybe whoever killed Louisa thought the source of funds would dry up and then Conway would trumpet himself right out of town.”

  “It’d be better to knock off Hedrick himself, wouldn’t it?” said Georgia. “Seems to me that there’s a lot more here than meets the eye.”

  “You’re probably right. But I’ve never liked to conduct an investigation on an empty stomach.” Meg got to her feet. “I vote we wait until after dinner. It’ll take me just a minute to get the crab salad out of Quill’s fridge and warm up the sourdough. And beans. We have these marvelous marinated green beans. I’m trying a new set of spices. You guys hold the investigation until I come back. Talk about something else.” She stepped inside and closed the French doors behind her.

  “You two make a habit of amateur investigation?”

  Quill chuckled. “In a way. Meg’s pretty good at it, actually. When she gets back, ask her about our other—I guess you could call them—cases.”

  “Ah!” Georgia leaned back with a pleased sigh. “What could be better? Gorgeous view, fabulous place. A bit of amateur detection to keep things interesting. And green beans a la Quilliam to come. Meg’s a terrific cook. I suppose you test out all her recipes before she tries them on your lucky guests?”

  “Oh, yes. One of the advantages.”

  “Then how the hell do you stay so slim?” Georgia patted her comfortably sized stomach. “After my husband passed on seven years ago, I thought, well, I can starve myself, get a face-lift, and trip around on stiletto heels trying to entice some sixty-five-year-old geezer into warming the sheets at night. Or I could buy an electric blanket and say the hell with it. I have three. Electric blankets, that is.” She wriggled her eyebrows. “And, come to think of it, there’s been a couple of geezers, too. But to tell you the truth, honey, at my age, a permanent male around the house can be such a pain in the tail it’s kind of a relief to be on my own.”

  “Did you have children?” Quill asked diffidently.

  “Douglas and I?” Georgia’s homely face clouded. “No. One of my few regrets. He couldn’t... that is, he could, he was great at it if you want to know the absolute bottom-line truth, there hasn’t been a geezer yet that can even come close, but I never got pregnant, and by the time we realized that there might be something wrong, I was really kind of past it, from a physical standpoint. It was the usual, low-sperm-count kind of thing. And who knows? If we’d had kids, the little bastards might have turned out god knows how. But it would have been nice.” She sighed, wistfully. “Sometimes I think, if we’d had kids, I’d still have a little bit of Doug. The curve of a cheek, a way of walking, that would remind me of the kind of man he was. But life didn’t give us that. Gave us a lot of other things. But not that. We had a hell of a good time together, except toward the last, and who could have predicted that? I still miss him.”

  So many cruel things, thought Quill, that age and disease could do. She hoped for Georgia’s sake that Douglas’s death had been merciful, although from the distress on her face, it didn’t look like it.

  They sipped the wine in silenc
e. Quill thought about children. Would a child of Myles’s inherit his strong hands, or the quiet, attentive way he had of listening? If Myles died, would a son or daughter keep his spirit alive for her?

  “I hadn’t thought much beyond the first part,” she said aloud. “Diapers and whatnot.”

  “About kids, you mean?” Georgia’s smile was reassuring. “I’ve got nieces and nephews, and let me tell you, honey, the good stuff comes after the diapers part. There’s a point where they get faces, you know? I’m here to tell you, as the most involved auntie of years past, present, and future, that all babies look alike. Then they hit three years old or so, and all of a sudden, there’s the Nose.” She patted her own rather prominent one. “And then the Chin. And they start to talk, and from being sort of soft, little, boring bundles that fit just right into the curve of your arm, they turn into people. Real ones. It’s the damnedest thing, watching a kid grow up. You know that bit of life when you think things will always be like this? That part where any change is a big-time threat, because you’re perfectly happy the way things are? That’s a fantasy and kids are the best antidote I know for keeping things real. They change every day, in the most amazing, fundamental ways. And it keeps you straight, as a person. Makes you understand that life is hard, life is change, life is a battle. And the minute you sit down and try to grab the waves to keep the tide from going out, which is something we all want to do now and then, honey, here comes the kid, a living breathing agent for life assurance. Not insurance. Assurance.”

  “Jeez,” said Meg, stepping through the French doors with a loaded tray. “The green beans a la Quilliam are going to be quite an anticlimax after that.”

  “Well, you asked us not to start the detective stuff until you got back.” Georgia leaned forward. “God! That smells fantastic!”

  Meg picked up a bean and handed it over. Georgia ate it, rolled her eyes, and said, “More! More!”

  “What do you think, Quill?” Meg set the tray containing the beans, the crab salad, and a fresh loaf of sourdough bread on the wrought-iron table. Quill sampled the vegetable. “Rosemary. And garlic. I like it a lot.”

  Meg served with quick deft movements, then poured them all a second glass of the chardonnay. “I’ll put the beans on the menu for the party tomorrow night.”

  Georgia swallowed a mouthful of crab salad. “Wow and more wow. That’s it, guys. I’m moving in. I want to be a permanent guest. I’m absolutely serious. Do you have a rate schedule for the year?”

  “We have one year-round resident,” said Quill. “Mr. Stoker. Well, he paid for three months in advance, and he’s talking about staying on after that. And we had to charge him the daily winter rates, which are a bit cheaper than the summer, but not all that much.”

  “No problem.” Georgia stuffed a second forkful of crab salad into her mouth. “Doug left me pretty well fixed, bless his heart. Let’s talk about being detectives, and about me becoming a permanent addition to the team.” She stopped in midsentence, the remainder of the crab halfway to her mouth. “Unless you think I’d be a pain in the neck. I wouldn’t, you know. I’ve got a lot friends who’d come to visit, and my needlepoint, and I make a religion of inertia.”

  “That’s not it at all. We’d love it. It just seems so expensive, Georgia. There are a few lovely little houses in town you might like to look at.”

  “Do they have a cook in residence? Maid service? Great company? Not to mention a couple of at-home detectives?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Quill. “As a matter of fact, we’d love to have you as a permanent guest.”

  “Then let’s talk about it. Not right this second. Later, after my head’s a little clearer. Now, before we get to the case, let’s talk about this party tomorrow night. Who’s coming? Is it just for the Kiplings? Because you don’t have to do it, you know. Everyone in the whole society is loaded to the gills, including me, and they need freebies about as much as a picnic needs ants. Food like this ain’t cheap, I’ll be bound. And that little contretemps yesterday afternoon was nothing. No need to apologize.”

  “We’ll end up serving everybody at the Inn and a bunch of the townspeople, too,” said Meg. “We always do. Quill invites anybody she thinks is lonely, or isn’t getting enough food, or maybe a little depressed, and we’ll be serving a hundred if we serve five. I’m not going all out, if that’s what you’re worried about, Georgia. We grow a lot of our own herbs and practically all the vegetables we serve. We bake our own bread. The only thing that’ll cost is the wine, and we’ll charge for that, and the sushi, and nobody except the Sakuras will eat that.”

  “Cherry blossom,” said Georgia, her mouth full.

  “In the spring,” said Meg helpfully.

  “No. Sakum means ‘cherry blossom’ in Japanese.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Quill, fascinated.

  “The Japanese are nuts for Kipling. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, the society took a trip to Tokyo in April, and Lyle Fairbanks delivered a paper on the influence of Robert W. Service on Kipling’s later work to the Rotary Club in Kyoto.”

  “There’s a Rotary Club in Kyoto?” Meg buttered a piece of sourdough.

  “The Japanese are nuts for Rotary, too.”

  “Robert W. Service?” asked Quill. “ ‘A bunch of the guys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon’? That Robert W. Service?”

  “That’s the one! Lyle has a theory that he and Kipling knew each other in the late eighteen eighties. Kipling lived in Virginia for quite a while, you know, and Service was on the lecture circuit in the northeast in 1888 or some damn thing. I don’t recall for sure. Can I have a little bit more of the potato thingy?”

  “Billed potato mousse,” said Meg. “I like potatoes. I like potatoes almost as much as I like onions. When I die, if I come back as a vegetable, I want to come back as an onion.”

  “I wonder what Louisa Conway will come back as.” Georgia helped herself to the mousse, took a sip of wine, and shouted suddenly, “My stomach is so happy! Sorry. Back to business. Well, I never met the lady, alive and breathing, that is, but from what I heard, she’ll probably be back as an overripe mango.” She looked up from the mousse, and her expression sobered. “I’m sorry. Doug always said I had a flapping lip, especially after a glass and a half of wine. This isn’t a joke, is it? The poor lady’s dead, and nobody seems to care. Now, how do we start this investigation?”

  “John always says to follow the money,” said Quill.

  “And that’s been true for two of our cases, at least.”

  “Sounds like a great idea to me. Does anyone know anything about these people? The name of their lawyers, or even what city they came from? I mean, from what I can gather, they’ve only been in town a few weeks, and nobody really had much to do with them.”

  “You have no idea how much we know about the Con-ways already,” said Meg with a smug grin. “This is a small town. And a small town gossip mill is the amateur detective’s best friend.”

  “So what does the town know about them?”

  “The nonessential stuff is that Hedrick worked for the Department of Motor Vehicles,” said Quill. “Before Louisa married money. And they’ve traveled quite a bit since Louisa inherited. Carlyle and Louisa were talking about the Cote d’Azur yesterday. The essential stuff is that Hedrick keeps all of his story notes in a little red book he calls his bible. That’s what we want to take a look at. Then we need to make a list of everyone who was at the site to find out who had access to the hammer.”

  “Everyone?” said Georgia. “My God, the place was a zoo.”

  “It might not be that much of a hassle.” Meg picked up a piece of sourdough, regarded it for a long moment, and put it down again. “The very first thing, I think, is to find out where the hammer came from.” She shot a sidelong glance at Quill. “We used to have an in at the sheriffs department, and maybe we can revive that contact again.”

  “That gorgeous hunk?” said Georgia. “The one who’s six-foot plus with the terr
ific tan and the steely gray eyes? This job’s starting to sound more interesting by the minute. If I were thirty years younger and forty pounds thinner ...” She looked at the meringue piled with strawberries and cream that Meg had made for dessert, chuckled, and dug in. “Forget that. Who’s got the in?”

  “Kathleen Kiddermeister,” said Quill promptly. “Our head waitress. Her brother’s the deputy.”

  “A-huh,” said Georgia skeptically. She raised an inquiring eyebrow at Meg, who shook her head and smiled. “But how is it going to help to know where the hammer’s from? I mean, don’t you suppose it came from the site? Somebody just walked by and picked it up and hauled off and socked Louisa?”

  “If we can pin down which of the carpenters missed it, then we can maybe get a better fix on who had the opportunity to pick it up,” said Meg. “Carpenters love their hammers—it’s like Quill with her paintbrushes or me with my paring knife. And good hand tools are expensive. The guys either have them in their tool belts, in the trucks, or they’re using them. I don’t think pinning down the disappearance of the hammer is going to be as difficult as it sounds.”

  “But what if somebody brought it with them?” asked Georgia. “Then we’re talking premeditation, if I’ve got the term right.”

  “And it doesn’t have the feel of a premeditated murder, does it?” asked Meg. “So the first two questions are: Who was there? Who had access to the hammer? Then we can make up a list of suspects and take the next step.”

  “And that is?” asked Georgia eagerly.

  “To link the preliminary list of suspects with Louisa.”

  “How the heck can we do that? I mean, let’s say we interrogate them one by one. The murderer’s going to lie isn’t he? Or she, as the case may be?”

  Meg grinned. “As I said, we have an in with the sheriffs department. Myles will be digging up all kinds of information. He can access computer records, subpoena lawyer’s documents—like the will—find out if Hedrick’s discovered any mini-scandals for real, or if it’s just smoke. If Quill, that is, Kathleen, gets us the facts from the sheriffs department, we don’t have to interrogate anyone. We do the legwork and put the facts together.”